I’m pretty sure I pushed a paperclip into a socket when I was a kid. I’m not totally sure about that, though, because it seems like the kind of thing my mom would bring up when she starts on how I’ve injured myself over the years.
When I was about 12 or so, my family went for vacation vacation at this place on the Pugent Sound. I was running around a neighbor’s fish pond when I tripped over some deer wire and went down. The current was mild enough that it took me a few moments to realize I was being shocked, and even then it didn’t really hurt, it just felt strange.
Later on that afternoon, I was playing on a rope swing with two of my cousins, who’re around the same age as me. On one turn, I couldn’t get myself back up on the platform, and ended up suspended over the water. Well, we were all sure that if I waded through the water to get to shore, I would shock myself terribly because I still had electricity going through my system. (No, none of us were real big on science.) I stayed there until the sun started to go down, at which point I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to wait out the tide and dropped down into the water. I was, as you can guess, not shocked horribly, although the water was pretty cold.
One of my appliances has a plug that’s a pain to pull out of an outlet. One day, I was having a harder time with it than usual, and wrapped my fingers around the edge of it, touching the prongs. Sad things is it took me about 10 seconds to realize what that funny feeling was.
Can we do static electricity? A friend of mine has a car that really likes to bite me (and only me) for some reason. She’d pulled into her garage and we were getting out. As I touched the door to close it, the static electricty was strong enough to create a spark that lit the garage. Oww.
In 7th grade, our science rooms had outlets at the work stations. One bright kid decides to see what’ll happen to him if he sticks a paper clip into the outlet.
Our room reeked for the rest of the week.
When I was visiting India at 15, I was staying with my poor cousins (whom I love best of all!) I went to go into the bedroom. I reached up, but my hands on the sill, and bzzzt! It was a few seconds of blackness, and then I looked up and saw there was a naked wire up there. I never told anyone about it, because those few seconds of unawareness really scared the shit out of me. I’ve never fainted, and I’ve never had that kind of moment.
Once, after a gig, I was sitting on the couch watching late-night television. I felt a strange warmth on my right thigh. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I ignored it. It grew warmer. Then hot. Then blindingly, achingly, seering hot. So I decided to investigate. Turns out tha I had put what I thought was a dead 9-volt battery in my pocket along with some loose change. I’m guessing the contacts were touching a penny.
Jesus, people! Now you’ve got me all scared! I hadn’t even considered going to the doctor until I opened this thread this morning. I’ll schedule an appointment today. Meanwhile, what sort of hidden internal damage are we talking about here? I thought that if you lived through the bzzt, you were OK. Apparently not. What kind of symptoms should I be on the lookout for?
BTW, this weekend The Woman and I are going to change a broken window pane in a French door. Shall we start the pool on how I’ll hurt myself trying to accomplish this simple home maintenence task? (the smart money is on “auto-decapitation”)
Not sure if this explains why it’s a myth, but your heart isn’t actually on the left side of your chest. It’s in the middle, but it’s tilted such that (IIRC), more of the heart falls left of the dividing line than right.
The Wife will no longer stay in the same room as I am if I am working on electricity, although she does check in on occasion to see if She needs to call 911.
A couple of months ago I needed to open up the back of the dryer for a minor repair (funny smell; had to see if something had fallen on the heating coils). There is a BIG SWITCH on the box that the dryer’s cable comes from. Silly of me to think that that switch actually turned off the power, expecially as there is nothing else attached to that box.
Anyway, I’m unscrewing the cable at the appliance when I feel a jolt. I say “Damn” which is my usual exclamation. The Wife comes in to see what happened and actually yelled at me when I showed Her. (“You see, when the screwdriver touches hereZOT! damn…”)
She keeps a big insurance policy on me, and I am forbidden from doing any home improvements without responsible adult supervision.
Either hand is fine. Just keep the other one out of the way. You want to avoid making a path in one hand across the lungs and through the heart, and then out the other hand. It can be your left or right hand. I use my right hand just because I am right handed. Lefties use their left hand. I’ve been bit by some heavy juice. I’m still here because I only had one hand touching anything. I’m feeling just fine <twitch> <twitch>